The present invention relates to data transmission systems, and in particular to the transmission and reception of digitized data between components of a motor vehicle data network.
The transmission of digitized signals, especially in real time, often encounters the problem that the rate at which the digitized data are generated and their resolution (i.e., the number of bits of their data values) are poorly matched to a given transmission infrastructure. Many data transmission systems, especially multiplexed systems, manage their transmission capacity in the form of channels, which are characterized by an operating frequency and a word width. If this word width is less than that of a transmitted digitized channel, several channels must be provided to transmit the signal, even if the quantity of data transmitted per unit time might find room in one channel.
A typical example of such a problem is the transmission of voice signals on a Media Orientated System Transport (MOST) bus system. The MOST bus includes an optical bus system that is used in motor vehicles for the transmission of data that are not directly specific to the operation of the motor vehicle. Such data can include, for example, audio and/or video signals of a car radio or car telephone, or navigation signals for a GPS system.
The MOST specification provides for a bus system with a ring structure for synchronous data transmission with a uniform system clock pulse of 44.1 kHz. Frames are transmitted on the ring bus at this frequency, and each frame contains a plurality of bytes. These bytes, which always recur at the system cycle of 44.1 kHz, are also referred to as channels. Every data source connected to the ring bus uses a certain number of such channels to send and/or receive data.
According to the MOST specification, four bytes per frame (i.e., four channels) are specified for the transmission of audio signals. This bandwidth is necessary for high-grade stereo transmission of arbitrary audio signals. However, due to the limited frequency spectrum of the human voice, the transmission of signals representing human voice requires less bandwidth. Especially in the case of a telephone voice signal, which is transmitted monophonically, the data transmitted on the MOST bus are always pairwise the same. Thus the MOST bus is used rather inefficiently for voice transmission data.
Therefore, there is a need for a technique for transmitting data such as voice data between components of a vehicle data network.